


Cat Lady

by Ariel_Tempest



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Cats, Fluff, Gen, Making Friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 19:19:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15007601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariel_Tempest/pseuds/Ariel_Tempest
Summary: Mrs. Baxter is determined to make friends.





	Cat Lady

She first saw him sitting at the edge of the yard, right at the corner of the house, watching the world with an air of boredom. He had a rather large chunk of his left ear missing, remnants of an old fight, but beyond that he looked sleek and well fed. Given that Mrs. Patmore was religious about keeping the stable cats from the kitchens, it must have been the sign of a good hunter. As she drew closer, he turned to look at her. His fine black coat was broken by a white blaze and bib and his eyes were a blue-green colour she didn't usually associate with cats. His tail flickered and showed a white tip and neat, white paws. 

She liked cats. Smiling, she bent over and held her hand out, tsking with her tongue to get his attention. He looked away again, twitching an ear as if he were dismissing her. She straightened again, continuing forward. The cat followed her with that notched ear and when she got too close he stood languidly, still not looking at her, and with a flick of his tail vanished around the corner of the building. By the time she turned the corner, he was nowhere to be seen.

When she came back from the village, he was lounging in the sun by the front door, just at the edge of the step. "I don't think Mr. Carson would approve of such indolence, sir," she chuckled, speaking to him as if he could understand. It would have made her feel self conscious, but there was no one else around, and after all, Lord Grantham always spoke to the dogs in that manner. From what she'd overheard around the servant's hall, he was even worse with Tiaa than he'd been with Isis.

It didn't matter anyway. The cat simply watched her, unmoving beyond the steady beat of his tail on the stone. She walked on, leaving him to face Mr. Carson's disapproval, should it come, on his own.

 

* * *

She didn't know where the cat had come from, but he seemed disinclined to leave. The other barn cats would occasionally walk up to her, meowing a greeting and twining around her legs, enjoying a scratch of the ears or the shoulders before leaving to chase mice or find a nice bit of sunlight to lie in. The black and white tom, on the other hand, remained aloof, watching her from the stable windows or next to the wall or wherever he had taken up his post at the time. If she got too close he would stand, never in any hurry, and walk away, as if offended she could think of befriending him. Where the other cats occasionally chased each other or bathed one another's ears, he always seemed to be off on his own, not that it seemed to bother him any.

Still, he intrigued her, somehow. Without her really being aware of it, he became a challenge. He would blink those large, sea-green eyes at her and it was as if he was speaking, daring her to try and make him like her.

She took the challenge. She couldn't walk away from it, really. 

She started by taking him scraps from breakfast or luncheon - bits of bacon that got a bit too crisp or not crisp enough, crumbles of cheese too small to bother with, that sort of thing. She had to catch him alone, or the others would come running over, tails trailing question marks behind them, to gobble the offerings. She would walk just until he sat up or stood and prepared to leave, then she would set the food down and back away. 

He watched her the whole time. When she felt she was far enough away she would stop and wait. He never moved immediately. Sometimes he would stay still for so long she considered retrieving the food and going back inside, but eventually he would stand and stroll over to her offering, eating it with enough dignity to match the Dowager Countess. When he was finished he would wash his paws and face and sometimes his tail, then stand and walk off without a backward glance.

She slowly narrowed the amount of distance she put between herself and the food. If they were by the stables, she stood closer. If they were by the servant's entrance, she placed the food closer to herself and made him walk further to get it. When she did that, he flicked his ears as if asking her why she thought he should walk so far for so little, and there were a few days where he passed the treats by entirely, but generally he would break down if she was just patient enough. 

With permission from Mrs. Hughes and Mrs. Patmore, she started putting her breakfast bowl out with a bit of milk left over from her porridge. She had felt a bit silly, explaining that she'd taken a shining to one of the stable cats and wanted to give it a treat now and again, but Mrs. Hughes had grown up on a farm. Favorite barn cats were not a foreign concept to her. In fact she was willing to share a brief anecdote about a particular tabby from her childhood. 

"He was so big, I always thought he was a wild cat," she remembered fondly. "He liked to sleep up on the hay barrels and when you disturbed him, he'd jump down and was so heavy it sounded like someone had dropped a steamer trunk full of knick knacks on the floor! But he was a sweet thing, at the end of the day, and we had no problem with rats with him around."

He started waiting for her, after that. Every morning she would walk out into the yard and he would be sitting by the corner of the house or up on a barrel. Something like that. She stopped walking toward him all together, instead just finding a place to sit and placing the bowl at her feet. 

It took several days before he would come to her without hesitation. He still shied away from her hand, when she held it out. Occasionally he would even lay his ears back and hiss, letting her know that he was simply here for the treat he so obviously deserved. So she generally ignored him, or pretended to, staring off across the yard in a different direction and watching him from the corner of her eyes until she heard his tongue lapping at the milk. Then she would look down watch him directly, smiling softly to herself.

* * *

 

She was nothing if not patient, nothing if not persistent in her kindness. 

A day became a week, a week a month. They fell into a routine, each getting slowly bolder in each other's presence. He would stand and start moving toward her as soon as the door opened. She would hold the bowl until he was at her feet, looking up at her. She would wait for the irritable meow, demanding that she hurry up and give him his treat. "Woman!" she could imagine him saying, "That is mine, now give it to me!"

He took himself far too seriously. 

One day, when she had left a bit more milk than usual, she waited until he was absorbed in his treat and then slowly, oh so slowly, leaned over. She stretched out her hand and with just one finger scratched between his shoulder blades. At first he didn't seem to register the sensation. Then, barely audible at first, a low rumbling started. The purr grew louder, like an engine warming up, vibrating through his bones and muscle, punctuated by the lapping of his tongue.

Then he realized: she was touching him.

Without warning he bolted to the other side of the yard. He glared back at her, all indignation, and set about vehemently bathing, rubbing her contact away with his tongue. She bit back a giggle as she retrieved the bowl and stood, preparing to go back inside.

"Well, that could have gone better," a voice behind her said.

She turned, surprised to find herself in company. She hadn't heard his shoes on the pavement, and there had been no whiff of smoke to alert her, even thought he stood with a cigarette lit between his fingers. He was watching the cat. "It might have, Mr. Barrow," she agreed. "But it could also have gone worse. I'm sure he'll eventually figure out that he likes me more than not."

He gave her a sideways look and a smirk. "Don't know when to give up, do you?"

She met his pale eyes and smiled. "No, Mr. Barrow. I don't."

"Waste your own time," he shrugged, flicking the ash from his cigarette as he stepped past her, through the servant's door and into the house proper. She looked back toward where the cat had been, but he had gone, so she too went inside to get on with her day. By the time she stepped through the door, Thomas was nowhere to be seen.

**Author's Note:**

> Decided to migrate some of my better Tumblr works over here. The cat's appearance is actually based on a pair of real life cats.


End file.
